Classic shooter Return to Castle Wolfenstein is playable via Xbox Insider

A classic 2001 shooter may soon be available on PC Game Pass. A preview for Return to Castle Wolfenstein is currently available on the Xbox Insider Hub for PC users. You don’t even need to have a PC Game Pass subscription to give this preview a go. Just launch the Xbox Insider Hub, head over to the Previews tab, select Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and click join.

Ever since Xbox acquired Zenimax Media in 2020, most of Bethesda’s titles have been available on Xbox Game Pass. There are still a few games here and there that haven’t made their way to the service just yet, though. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was one of them, but now that it’s available on the Xbox Insider Hub, that isn’t a problem anymore.

Relive Wolfenstein‘s early days

The Wolfenstein series is much older than many may realize. It started out in 1981 with Castle Wolfenstein, but most recognize the true beginnings of the franchise as 1992’s Wolfenstein 3D. Even then, when most people think about the better titles from Wolfenstein‘s early entries, the common answer is Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

There isn’t much about Return to Castle Wolfenstein that seems particularly special. It’s a very solid first-person shooter that puts the player right into the action. It also came out around the time when World War II shooters were all the rage. But, instead of recreating events from World War II, it played around with the setting a bit more. For example, there’s a decent amount of supernatural elements in the game to keep you on your toes.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is definitely worth checking out, especially as the preview is free on the Xbox Insider Hub. This is especially true if you’re a fan of later games in the series like Wolfenstein: The New Order. Just don’t expect to have the same sort of rich storytelling. It’s fair to say that Return to Castle Wolfenstein is more straightforward. Hopefully, we’ll see 2009’s Wolfenstein on the service soon as well. It’s been unavailable on most digital platforms since 2014, so it would be nice to try it out again.